Norodom Sihanouk

Norodom Sihanouk, the former King of Cambodia, who has died aged 89, was only
intermittently a monarch; for more than half a century, though, he played a
leading part in the tragic post-war history of his country.

As king from 1941 to 1955 he outwitted the French government to win independence for Cambodia, before abdicating to gain political power. As ruler between 1955 and 1970 he strove to make Cambodia “a haven of peace” amid the fury of the Vietnam War.

Subsequently, as an exile, he conspired with Chinese communists to liberate Cambodia from “the imperialist clique” which had replaced him. He must therefore bear some responsibility for the murderous domination of the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1978.

Even so, during the 1980s, when a Vietnamese government ruled Cambodia, Sihanouk remained the sole figure capable of uniting the opposition. In 1991 he finally returned to Phnom Penh as chairman of the Supreme National Council. Two years later, after an election under United Nations auspices, the National Assembly restored him as monarch, albeit one who would “reign not rule”.

Sihanouk’s character was as unpredictable as his fortunes, for he combined the characteristics of an educated Frenchman and an Oriental despot. His generosity and good humour were genuine, and enabled him to pose with some conviction as the father of his people. On the other hand he was capable of ruthlessness and a disregard for the processes of law, as in the execution of political opponents.

In his palmy days Sihanouk edited magazines, directed films, conducted jazz bands, and crooned songs of his own composing. Yet he was shrewd enough to remember, even in the wake of his metropolitan indulgences, that the source of his power lay in the loyalty of the Cambodian peasantry.

If his evenings were dedicated to hedonism, the next morning would find him listening patiently to the complaints of villagers, for whom he represented the quasi-religious authority of his ancestors, the “god-kings” of Angkor.

Samdech Preah Norodom Sihanouk was born in Phnom Penh on October 31 1922, the scion of two much-intermarried royal families, the Norodoms and the Sisowaths, who had ruled Cambodia for several hundred years. His father, Prince Suramarit, was the grandson of King Norodom, ruler of the turbulent vestigial kingdom when the French first imposed their protectorate in 1863.

The boy’s mother called him “Thoul”, or “Tubby”. All his life he would be obliged to alternate his gourmet indulgences with slimming sessions in French health clinics.

Sihanouk was educated in Saigon, Vietnam and Paris. In 1941, when he was chosen to succeed his grandfather, King Monivong, he was still at the Lycée Chasseloup Laubat in Saigon; his fellow pupils remembered him as friendly and timid, and far from enthusiastic at the prospect of becoming king.

French Indo-China was then under Japanese hegemony, though the influence of Tokyo was kept precariously at arm’s length by the pro-Axis policy of Vichy. Sihanouk had been trained by his advisers to support Marshal Pétain, but after the end of the Second World War, as Indo-Chinese independence became imminent under the auspices of the Viet Minh communists, he skilfully disentangled himself from the French.

The Cambodians, regarded by the French as too backward and incompetent to conduct their own affairs, were agitating for freedom. But the main group making this demand, the Democratic Party, combined its anti-French stance with hostility to the monarchy, which it regarded as a tool of Paris.

Sihanouk exchanged the easy, futile life of puppet king for the risky role of national leader. Aware that the national assembly, in which the Democratic Party held a massive majority, was effectively powerless, he highhandedly dismissed them.

But though he did not hesitate to use French help in the form of Senegalese troops brought from Saigon, he promptly embarked on his own “Crusade for National Independence”.

At first the French refused to give Cambodia the full independence which Sihanouk was demanding. But in February 1953, after they had tried to fob him off with a lunch at the Elysée with President Auriol, he flew to Canada, the United States and Japan to ventilate his grievances, notably in a flamboyant interview with The New York Times.

Back in Cambodia, Sihanouk stayed out of French control and moved to his villa at Siem Rep, close to Angkor, the capital of his ancient Khmer ancestors. There, in a daring bluff, he stirred up the population in his support.

His threat sufficed to persuade the French to give in, and to grant Cambodia full independence on November 9 1953. They had been vanquished by the theatrical antics of a king whom they had believed to be their own creature. And by 1955, when Cambodia became financially viable in its own right, Sihanouk’s reputation had been further enhanced.

Sihanouk, though, proceeded to abdicate his throne in favour of his father, Prince Norodom Suramarit. His aim, to give himself a more solid political base, abundantly succeeded, for the Sangkum Reastr Niyum, or Popular Socialist Community, which he set up, won 83 per cent of the vote in the election of 1955.

From then until 1970 Sihanouk ruled supreme. When his father died in 1961, he assumed the office of Head of State, but retained only the title of Samdech Upayuvareach, “His Royal Highness the former King”, styled as Monseigneur. His mother became the ceremonial representative of the ancient monarchy.

Sihanouk strove to solve Cambodia’s economic and social problems through the idiosyncratic ideology of “Royal Buddhist socialism”. His aim was “a democracy comprehensible to the people”, in which the untutored masses would exercise “a real, direct and continuous control of institutions”.

At the biennial national congresses of Sangkum Reastr, citizens were encouraged to pillory officials and ministers with their grievances. The proceedings were dominated by the ebullient Prince, whose high-pitched voice could be heard through loudspeakers (and on the national radio system), goading officials and sharing jokes with his rustic audience.

Throughout the late 1950s and the 1960s Sihanouk’s most serious concern was to keep Cambodia out of the escalating war in Vietnam. This aim involved a hardening of the anti-American prejudice he had inherited from the French — even if he continued to accept American aid, and to proclaim himself “friend to all, ally of none”.

Jealous of Cambodia’s neutrality, Sihanouk refused to place the country under the protection of SEATO. Instead, he tightened relations with Prime Minister Nehru of India, President Sukarno of Indonesia and President Tito of Yugoslavia. Zhou Enlai, the Chinese Communist leader, became a close friend.

In November 1963 Sihanouk, convinced that the South Vietnamese and the Thais were preparing, with American approval, to invade Cambodia, ordered an end to the US military aid programme, so cutting off 15 per cent of the national budget. In March 1964 he organised a “spontaneous” demonstration of anger against the British and American embassies. The British chancery building and the premises of the British Council were sacked by mobs carrying cane-knives.

Trade was nationalised; private banks were closed. As a result the business community traded clandestinely, and a large part of Cambodia’s rice crop was smuggled out and sold at inflated prices to the communist insurgents in Vietnam.

To prevent this, the army was ordered in 1967 to collect much of the rice harvest at an official price, and to store it in government warehouses. At Samlaut, near Battambang, peasant resentment turned into armed revolt during which some 10,000 fleeing farmers were killed.

Sihanouk was convinced that the Vietnamese communists and Cambodian leftists were behind these troubles. He tried in vain to renew relations with Washington and to obtain the restoration of economic and military aid to a country now sinking into an economic morass.

As the situation deteriorated, Sihanouk seemed to lose his political instinct. He cancelled valuable West German aid when Bonn criticised his recognition of East Germany. He allowed Chinese from Macau to open a casino in Phnom Penh which became a ruinous temptation to its citizens.

He also devoted much time to making sentimental feature films, of which he was author, producer, director and principal actor, and awarded himself an Oscar for his film Twilight.

In March 1970, during Sihanouk’s absence in Europe, the National Assembly in Phnom Penh withdrew its support, and he was removed from office by a coup d’état planned by his pro-Western cousin Prince Sisowath Sirik Matak and executed by the previously loyal General Lon Nol, the Prime Minister and Minister of Defence. The monarchy was abolished and Cambodia declared a republic. Sihanouk fled to Beijing , and Sihanouk proceeded to denounce “the tools of American imperialism” and to ally himself with the extreme pro-Chinese communist group of Cambodian revolutionaries, the Khmer Rouge, whom he himself had driven into exile. His “Royal Government of National Unity” (known as GRUNK), based in Beijing, was dedicated to the defeat of Lon Nol.

Sihanouk’s Khmer Rouge minder was Ieng Sary, later one of the most feared men in Cambodia. In Beijing, Sihanouk amused himself by embarrassing the puritanical communist with pornographic films, borrowed from the French embassy. “Ieng Sary will have to go through terrible self-criticism tomorrow”, he would say.

In 1975 the Khmer Rouge, with North Vietnamese military assistance, captured Phnom Penh and instituted their genocidal regime. The city population was forced out into the countryside — “the Killing Fields” — where perhaps more than a million Cambodians died in massacres ordered by the Khmer Rouge President Khieu Samphan and his Prime Minister Pol Pot.

Sihanouk, though nominally head of state, had become a catspaw in their hands. He was allowed to return to Phnom Penh, but confined with his wife Monique to a modest villa in the Royal Palace compound, where he was required to do his own cooking. Six of his children, as well as other members of the royal family, were either killed or died from maltreatment.

In 1978 Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia, in a war provoked by Pol Pot. Only hours before the Vietnamese occupation of Phnom Penh, Sihanouk was freed, probably at Chinese instigation, and flown to Beijing, where he gave a six-hour press conference in which he denounced both the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnam invasion.

His attitude to the ousted Khmer Rouge was unpredictable: one day he promised to serve them; soon afterwards he would attack Pol Pot as a murderer. In truth, he had no illusions about the Khmer Rouge — “I don’t believe you can turn a tiger into a cat,” he remarked when the Chinese urged that they might behave more gently in future.

Nevertheless, he believed that co-operation with the Khmer Rouge was necessary if the People’s Republic of Kampuchea, the puppet regime which Cambodia’s traditional enemy Vietnam had established in Phnom Penh, was to be removed.

Sihanouk retreated to a palace provided by the North Korean government in Pyongyang — he even succeeded in making friends with President Kim Il Sung — but remained the focus of Cambodian national resistance to the Phnom Penh regime.

Under pressure from Beijing, he agreed in 1982 to a political marriage of convenience with Khieu Samphan, chief of the Khmer Rouge, whom he had condemned to death in the 1960s, and Son Sann, a Right-wing Buddhist who expressed a profound contempt for his former king.

Their squabbles continued through a series of abortive international negotiations until, in June 1991, at the Thai seaside resort of Pattaya, Sihanouk finally persuaded the various Cambodian factions — including the Vietnamese puppet government, the People’s Republic of Kampuchea — to declare a ceasefire.

It was a considerable achievement, which Sihanouk celebrated by treating the delegates to showings of two of his old films. That October the accord was ratified at a Paris conference, which restored Sihanouk as head of state.

It was also agreed that, while elections were being organised, the UN should take over the functions of government, and that Cambodian refugees should be repatriated. Soon afterwards Sihanouk returned in triumph to Phnom Penh.

His attitude to the Khmer Rouge remained equivocal. One Monday he advocated trying their leaders for genocide; on Wednesday he called them “monsters... but intelligent”; on Thursday he called for an exhibition of their atrocities to be dismantled; and on Saturday (after they had recognised him as head of state) he pronounced himself “touched and moved” by their loyalty.

As the violence continued throughout 1992, Sihanouk protested against the terrorist tactics of his opponents; nevertheless, in the election of May 1993 Funcinpec, the royalist party led by his son Ranariddh, won 45 per cent of the vote, although the Cambodian People’s Party gained almost as many seats.

There was a fortnight of political chaos, which Sihanouk resolved by declaring himself head of state, Prime Minister and chief of the armed forces. By early July he had succeeded in establishing an interim government, with Ranariddh and Hun Sen, leader of the Cambodian People’s Party, as joint Prime Ministers.

Sihanouk modestly pledged that he would resist the popular clamour (led by his son Ranariddh) to return to the throne, but in September, when the National Assembly restored the monarchy, he found himself compelled to accept their decision.

Already suffering from cancer, he still spoke optimistically of a liberal democracy in which human rights would be respected — but in the West his North Korean bodyguards and his continued flirtation with the Khmer Rouge did not inspire confidence. In 1997 Hun Sen led a successful coup, and remains in power to this day. Sihanouk’s influence diminished, and he abdicated in 2004, citing ill health.

Sihanouk had two official wives, Princess Thavet Norleak (his first cousin) and Princess Monique. He and Norleak separated in 1968, and they had no surviving children . Monique, née Izzi, daughter of a French entrepreneur of Italian origin and a Phnom Penh divorcee, became Sihanouk’s closest companion.

The elder of her two sons, Sihamoni (born in 1953) became a ballet coach at the Paris Opera, and succeeded his father as king in 2004. The second is Narindrapong (born in 1954) .

The young king also fathered several children out of wedlock, including two by a dancer in the royal ballet. These were Princess Bopha Devi (born 1943), who herself became the star dancer in the ballet, and Prince Ranariddh, who studied law in France.

Princess Monikessan, Sihanouk’s young aunt, bore him a son, Naradipo (born 1946) , who died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.

Another aunt, Princess Pongsamoni, bore him four sons: Yuvanath (born 1943); Ravivong (born 1944) who died during the Khmer Rouge period; Chakrapong (born 1945); and Khemanurakh (born 1949), who was also a Khmer Rouge victim. Princess Pongsamoni had three daughters: Soriyaraingsey (born 1947) and Botumbopha (born 1951), both of whom were killed by the Khmer Rouge; and Kantha Bopha, who died in infancy — the inconsolable Sihanouk carried her ashes with him on all his travels.

Mam Manivann, a Laotian, bore him two daughters, Sucheatvateya (born in 1953), killed by the Khmer Rouge, and Arunrasmey (born in 1955).

Norodom Sihanouk, former King of Cambodia, born October 31 1922, died October 15 2012